How to serve up real-time display advertising that works

Economia uses intelligent advertising solution that pays for itself

Centrum Holdings (centrum.cz) had been searching for a new ad server for several months. Because advertising drives more than 60 percent of its total revenues, the selection process was painstakingly thorough. The Internet company was looking for an all-in-one solution that would give them predictive analysis, accurate targeting, real-time banner ad placement and optimization as well as advanced reporting. The solution they chose has already paid for itself.

Economia can now give its clients better targeted and measurable campaigns and advertising across all media in its portfolio.

Matěj Novák
Yield Manager

Several global suppliers of advertising technologies participated in the selection process, which took nearly six months.

The decisive factors that influenced the solution selection included:

Seamless integration with existing technologies.

Ease of use of the system.

Availability of elaborate reporting and prediction tools.

Economia will use the software to increase its advertising revenues through a better use of its advertising space. Specifically, the company intends to integrate bookings, launches and reporting. It is also adopting a more modern targeting strategy – away from targeting based on a user’s preferred online channel to one that relies on specific characteristics of the individual. The full implementation at all Economia properties took less than a year, and within one month the company saw significant results.

All-in-one advertising solution

The SAS® Intelligent Advertising for Publishers tool is an all-in-one solution that supports the entire process of creation, planning, implementation and performance assessment of online marketing campaigns. “Economia can now give its clients better targeted and measurable campaigns and advertising across all media in its portfolio,” says Matěj Novák, Yield Manager of Economia, whose responsibility is the optimization of advertising space and new technologies in online advertising.

Economia has been most pleased with the solution’s robust reporting capability. “To do our job efficiently, we need detailed knowledge of what works and what does not – without that we face a 99 percent probability of failure,” explains Novák. “We also need to know what was sold, what our advertising space capacity is, and what we have to prepare for in the future.”

The integration of real-time bidding (RTB) – that is the ability to use an optimization algorithm to establish a value for an incoming impression and bid accordingly in real time – has significantly improved performance of the banners to the tune of hundreds of thousands of Czech Korunas in increased revenue. Economia had expected a return on its investment within 12 months, but tangible savings and results were realized in the first month.

Challenge

Economia was looking for a solution that could keep pace with the rapid development of advertising technologies and also offer the company a set of tools for accurate targeting, forecasts, reporting and RTB (real-time bidding) integration. The company also wanted to increase advertising revenues through optimized use of advertising space.

Solution

Benefits

Return on investment in about six months thanks to optimized campaign launches.

Increased efficiency and optimized use of advertising space.

About Economia

In 2013, Economia gained a leading position in the online display advertising business when it purchased Centrum Holdings, the third largest Internet publishing house in the Czech Republic. Since the merger, Economia’s subscribers account for more than half of the Czech Republic’s Internet population (Centrum.cz has roughly 1 million users, with some 3.8 million visits a month). Economia also operates iHNed, Atlas.cz, Aktualne. cz and Zena.cz servers.

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.